The following letter that I wrote will be published in The Nation. I wrote in response to the article “Rising to the Occasion” (published elsewhere as “The ‘S’ Word”) by Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Nickel and Dimed) and Bill Fletcher, Jr. (spokesperson for the Maoist Freedom Road Socialist Organization and co-founder of Progressives for Obama), [...]
April 1st, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 1 comment | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "Discussion"
notes on Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
I am writing with some notes towards discussion of Lenin’s The State and Revolution (1917). The first point to make is that this is least controversial of the three texts by Lenin we read in the group, the other two being What is to be done? (1902) and “Left-Wing” Communism: an infantile disorder (1920). (Imperialism, [...]
March 30th, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 0 comments | Continued
notes on Luxemburg’s The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906)
I am writing with some notes on Rosa Luxemburg’s Mass, Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906), which we read as our second text from the period of the 1905 Revolution in Russia. First, on the 1905 Revolution, it needs to be emphasized that this was not only a prelude to and “rehearsal” [...]
March 23rd, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 0 comments | Continued
excerpt from Trotsky
From Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Results and Prospects (1906), VII. The Pre-Requisites of Socialism: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp07.htm “Undoubtedly, the concentration of production, the development of technique and the growth of consciousness among the masses are essential pre-requisites for socialism. But these processes take place simultaneously, and not only give an impetus to each other, but also retard and [...]
March 16th, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 0 comments | Continued
notes on Lukacs
I am writing with some brief, partial notes from our discussion at UChicago at yesterday’s (Sun. 3/8/09) reading group, on several essays from Georg Lukacs’s 1923 book History and Class Consciousness. I want to emphasize and discuss in particular a couple of passages, from the (original, 1922) Preface, and the essay “What is Orthodox Marxism?” [...]
March 9th, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 0 comments | Continued
notes on Spartacists on Lenin and the vanguard party
I am writing with some notes and suggestions for discussion on the Spartacist League pamphlet on “Lenin and the vanguard party” (1978): http://www.bolshevik.org/Pamphlets/LeninVanguard/LVP%200.htm I’d like to quote at length from Spartacist founder James Robertson’s 1973 speech “In Defense of Democratic Centralism” that is included in the pamphlet as supplemental material (and is edited in the [...]
March 1st, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 1 comment | Continued
Trotsky on art and politics: “with a sword or at least a whip in hand”
Re: Platypus: “They had friends, they had enemies, they fought, and exactly through this they demonstrated their right to exist.” – Trotsky, on the history of new political and artistic movements (1938) http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm Not a single progressive idea has begun with a “mass base,” otherwise it would not have been a progressive idea. It is [...]
February 26th, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 0 comments | Continued
notes on Lenin, What is to be done? — Platypus “neo-Leninism?”
I am writing with some notes and suggestions on Lenin’s What is to be done? (1902). I’d like to start with a quotation from Lenin’s first footnote, in the chapter “Dogmatism and Freedom of Criticism:” “At the present time (as is now evident), the English Fabians, the French Ministerialists, the German Bernsteinians, and the Russian [...]
February 23rd, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 0 comments | Continued
notes on Feb. 15 reading Korsch “Marxism and Philosophy” (1923)
” ‘[Humanity] always sets itself only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely it will always be found that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or are at least understood to be in the process of emergence’ [Marx, Preface to [...]
February 15th, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 2 comments | Continued
2006 interview with Juliet Mitchell
Juliet Mitchell: “I don’t think anti-psychiatrists such as Laing and Cooper saw the schizophrenic as the madman telling the truth. What we had were two sets of rigidity, we had the pathological dimension of psychosis in paranoia, schizophrenia: delusions — which are delusions, let’s face it. But then we had the normative delusions of an [...]
February 14th, 2009 | Chris Cutrone | 0 comments | Continued